Does pregnancy affect turnout? So far the importance of pregnancy has been left out of many political analyses. But how does pregnancy shape the ability to go to the voting booth? Whats the lingering effect of pregnancy over time? Our analysis is based on two sets of individual-level register data. The Danish dataset covers information on voting in the 2009 municipal elections. In Denmark, the voter lists are administered by the municipalities and municipal cooperation is thus needed to obtain the list. The data from the voter lists were merged in an anonymized form with highly-detailed socio-demographical information from Statistics Denmark. The data from the 2012 Finnish municipal elections were compiled from those electoral wards that used electronic voter registers. These included 211 electoral wards out of 2,265, covering 13.6 percent of the electorate. The data, administrated by the Ministry of Justice, were released to Statistics Finland after the elections. In Statistics Finland, the information on whether a person voted or not in these elections was linked to other data sets via personal identification number.

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"Aristocracies … may preserve themselves longest, but only democracies, which refresh their ruling class, can expand" - Hugh Trevor-Roper